Week #52 (5/22 & 25)

THIS IS THE FINAL DELIVERY OF THE 2017-18 YEAR! Thank you all for the support and encouragement that helped us make our 28th year a success. Now, on to year 29!

New crops keep coming on slowly. We’ve moved outside for our spinach and are pleased with its quality. Nigella Lawson’s recipe below is an interesting new twist on spinach salad.

SPINACH SALAD WITH LEMON AND MINT

1 lemon

⅓ cup fresh mint leaves, finely sliced, more for garnish

1 ½ teaspoons kosher salt

Freshly ground black pepper

8 ounces baby spinach leaves

3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

Cut off top and bottom of lemon, and slice off skin and pith. Cut lemon flesh into rounds 1/4-inch thick, then slice each round into eighths. In a salad bowl, combine lemon, mint, and salt. Season with pepper to taste. Add spinach and oil, and toss well. Garnish with additional mint, and serve. By Nigella Lawson

Carrots are a notoriously frustrating crop. They take a long time to germinate, are incredibly fragile when they do germinate and are victim to just about every pest from slugs, to deer, to gophers, to carrot rust flies. One trade off you have to make when seeding carrots is how thickly to seed. Too light and if germination is poor you get too few roots; too heavy and with good germination you either have to thin (time consuming and boring as all get out) or you get tiny crowded carrots. This year our seeding in the hoop house found a third way to frustrate us. We seeded heavily and germination was not too heavy (so far so good) however, the seeds continued to germinate in flushes so we wound up with a mixed bed in terms of how thickly the roots were growing so the question became whether to thin or not to thin or to thin here and there? In the end we’ve been able to harvest these first roots as a sort of thinning/harvest. With a bit of luck, where they were crowded the smaller carrots will now have space to fill out in the coming weeks. In any case, we love the flavor of these early carrots (a variety called Mokum). We think you will agree. If you don’t just munch them raw, this would be a good recipe to try. The recipe is for quite a bit more carrots than we gave, but reducing the recipe proportionately should be easy. We would also substitute green garlic for the cloves called for.

ROASTED CARROTS WITH GARLIC AND THYME

1 ½ Lbs carrots, peeled

10 – 12 small garlic cloves

2 Tbs Olive oil

salt and pepper

thyme sprig

chopped parsley, for garnish

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Cut carrots into 1-2 inch pieces, toss with oil, then season with salt and pepper. Put them in a roomy baking dish with the unpeeled garlic and thyme sprig. Add 2 Tbs of water, cover tightly with aluminum foil, and bake until tender, 25-45 minutes. Check at least twice to make sure there is moisture in the pan and stir the carrots gently. Toward the end, remove foil and continue roasting until liquid is reduced and the carrots are browned. Serve garnished with parsley. Note: The unpeeled garlic cloves can be squeezed to remove the creamy garlic, which can be used as a spread on bread or mixed with the carrots for a stronger garlic flavor. Adapted from Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone by Deborah Madison.

For half shares, this is an easy way to enjoy beets (full shares can find kohlrabi recipes in last week’s note or on our web site).